


Prove Your Body Wrong

by Thebonemoose



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:27:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25316770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thebonemoose/pseuds/Thebonemoose
Summary: Lily Wright was a bitch.She knew this. It had been hurled at her from the wet, saliva-glistening mouths of old men enough times for her to get the idea.It had also been thrown from the mouths of her female friends in high school-- girls she trusted. Girls she cared about.She learned young that there were limits. Someone may love her, care for her-- but only to a certain point. Only until she pushed them too far. She started pushing pretty far pretty fast, after that.Lily Wright was a bitch. She had been a bitch for years.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Prove Your Body Wrong

**Author's Note:**

> Ms wright I care you

_Anger is just love, left out, gone to vinegar  
You wake up a stranger to yourself then you  
Learn to live with her  
Sit in her clothing 'til you fill out her figure_

Lily Wright was a bitch. 

She knew this. It had been hurled at her from the wet, saliva-glistening mouths of old men enough times for her to get the idea. 

It had also been thrown from the mouths of her female friends in high school-- girls she trusted. Girls she cared about. 

She learned young that there were limits. Someone may love her, care for her-- but only to a certain point. Only until she pushed them too far. She started pushing pretty far pretty fast, after that. 

Lily Wright was a bitch. She had been a bitch for years. 

Once in middle school, a teacher referred to her as ‘unapologetic’. 

Unapologetic:  
Adjective.  
“Not acknowledging or expressing regret.”  
Synonyms: Defiant, unashamed, remorseless, callous. Relentless. 

Bitch. 

She held all her tenderness close to her chest, her best kept secret. The whole world could know about her love for women, the lesbian pride flag sticker on her water bottle, but they would never know all the soft parts of her that refused to sharpen.

But Jack knew. 

If she was daggers and sharp teeth with everyone else, she was all care and consideration with him. 

He wasn’t that much younger than her, even. Just a year and a half. But protecting him was a solemn duty that she took up willingly. She became a knight, sworn to take care of him. If somebody on the playground pushed him down, she got in their face and screamed. 

She earned her reputation as a problem child, and bore it proudly. Eventually, he grew out of his need for her to protect him, got taller and stronger and well-liked. But he didn’t leave her behind. 

With Jack, there were no limits. He loved her through it all. 

In college, Lily brought home a nervous stray named Sammy. That tenderness in her that only had room for Jack widened, just a little, just enough to make room for him, too. 

And things were perfect. For a long, lovely while, things were perfect. 

But maybe Lily started pushing, and she didn’t even realize. Maybe she pushed and pushed so slowly and so quietly that nobody noticed until it was too late, and she drove away the only real friend she’d ever had-- and even worse, she drove away Jack. 

Lily had been abandoned loads of times before. But not by Jack. Never by Jack. That soft part of her scabbed over like a gaping wound, and it hardened, grew sharp spines. It never healed. 

Lily drank more, and she gave herself bad piercings, took a pair of kitchen shears to her hair one night. Stopped trying to curb her meanness. She let her rage run free. 

_Bitch._

Jack called her sometimes. He and Sammy had their own shit going in LA, which Lily refused to hear about. Jack respected that, mostly. He asked about her, about her show and her life and her aging chihuahua.

The first time his name came up on her ringing phone, a pang of hope split her in half. She stuffed it down, though, and answered it with all the composure she could manage. The first call went well, of course, and there were many more. 

He told her about his stupid fascination with stupid King Falls and its stupid ghosts, told her he was trying to convince Sammy to go, even though she yelled at him for bringing up Sammy’s name. 

Then he disappeared. He disappeared, and Lily herself became a wound, badly scarred and unhealed beneath the surface. She would never be knitted together, she would never be whole. Because Jack was gone. 

Lily had been angry for her whole life, and the anger fermented, turned to sour wine that stained her hands with red. It kept everyone away. 

Almost everyone. 

Pippa was the best female friend Lily had ever had, and Lily knew she was probably in love with her. Pippa put up with Lily, listened when she was drunk and rambled about all the hurt she never got over, all the love for Jack that had nowhere to go anymore. 

(Pippa suggested she talk to Sammy, once, and Lily stopped calling her when she was drunk.)

Pippa got married to a wonderful woman named Shannon, and Lily was a perfect wedding guest, and then she went to her hotel room and got drunk in the bathtub. 

_Everybody leaves me. Everybody leaves._

Lily was pretty damn good at compartmentalizing. She could stow herself away, focus on the task at hand, and unpack herself again when the job was done. 

She could be professional and courteous, and hell, even _nice_.

...When the situation called for it, anyways.

But always there was some quiet undercurrent of snark, some hidden bitemarks at the edges of her words. Most people missed it. Only those who knew her well would ever notice. 

Jack always noticed.

King Falls was not like she’d expected, but at the same time, it was exactly like she’d expected. A quaint, small town with quaint, small-town people. 

And a hidden darkness that Lily just could not stay away from. 

She’d go back to Big Pine after a day of recording and interviewing, and she’d drink a truly exorbitant amount of cheap whiskey, and she would hear Jack’s voice in her ear. 

“You’ll drink yourself into an early grave, Lil,” he would probably say. 

“Maybe that’s the goddamn _point_.”

When she saw Sammy Stevens again, and met his pint-sized producer, it was almost like being back in college. Except that in college, Sammy was her friend, and they’d had Jack instead of Sammy’s new bestie. 

She didn’t pull her punches. 

_Bitch._

Lily was a woman with many regrets. 

If she was being honest, most of them were about Jack. If she was being dishonest, she would say there were about missed career opportunities, or lost loves. 

But hearing Sammy Stevens with real, genuine fear in his voice-- hearing him describe how close he came to dying? 

Lily would never admit it, but she didn’t want to lose him, too. 

And she was nothing if not tenacious. 

She wasn’t sure if Sammy recognized the third King Falls Chronicle as the olive branch it was, but it did its job. They were nothing like they used to be, but they weren’t those people, anymore, either. 

But she wanted to get to know the person he had become, even if the pain he’d caused still lay curled up beneath the surface of her skin. He was all she had left of Jack. 

When she woke up, her feet hurt. She wasn’t in her hotel room, which was slightly worrying, but then she heard Sammy banging around entirely too loudly in the kitchen, and part of her calmed. 

Then she rushed to the bathroom and threw up. 

She heard Sammy come quietly into the bathroom and hold her hair out of the way until she was done retching. She leaned back from the toilet bowl, and he handed her tissue to wipe her face. 

“I’m fine, Stevens,” she’d told him, but he shook his head. 

“You’re not, Lily.”

He was right. 

Lily Wright was a bitch, and she would probably be one for the rest of her life. But now she was a bitch with people who cared about her. She had friends, and a family, and a goal. 

She was going to get Jack back. And she wouldn’t let anything hurt him ever again.

**Author's Note:**

> Title and the little lyrics at the beginning are both from the song "the crow" by dessa


End file.
